June, 02 2022, 10:13am EDT
GOP Drilling Plan is a Climate Farce
House Republicans release pro-fossil fuels roadmap to climate chaos
WASHINGTON
Today, House Republican leadership unveiled what is purported to be the party's version of climate policy. The plan relies heavily on expanding fossil fuel drilling and boosting exports of fracked gas.
In response, Food & Water Action Managing Director of Policy Mitch Jones released the following statement:
"Over a dozen years ago, no one would have mistaken 'Drill, Baby, Drill' for serious climate policy. The fact that Republicans have not changed course in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and cascading climate-fueled disasters speaks volumes. What's needed now are serious plans that meet the monumental scale of the crisis, and also deliver the economic benefits and job opportunities that are so desperately needed. We need to elect climate champions this year who will prioritize shifting off of dirty fossil fuels that poison communities and enrich corporate polluters."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Exposed: Elon Musk's Real Reasons for Going Full MAGA for Trump
"As eccentric and provocative as Elon Musk wants people to think he is, he's really just another corporate billionaire who wants to avoid accountability."
Oct 22, 2024
Tesla founder Elon Musk has spent his career cultivating the image of a provocateur who's driven by a passionate commitment to free speech and technological innovation—but a new report by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen makes the case that when it comes to Musk's political priorities, there's nothing unique or trailblazing about him.
Musk, said Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool, is galvanized by the same concerns that lead oil executives to pour money into the campaigns of pro-fossil fuel politicians like Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: self-preservation.
Claypool published research cataloguing the numerous business-related incentives Musk has for supporting Trump, whose rallies the billionaire has spoken at recently and for whose campaign he has created a super political action committee.
At least three of Musk's businesses—electric car maker Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and social media platform X—face a total of at least 11 criminal and civil investigations over alleged fraud, labor violations, and other accusations.
"Enforcement priorities can shift significantly when administrations change," wrote Claypool. "Musk's self-serving desire to thwart the numerous civil and criminal investigations into his businesses seems a likely reason for the billionaire's increased involvement in electoral politics."
"Trump has promised to put Musk in charge of government efficiency. Since Musk's companies receive billions in government contracts every year—and often clash with government regulators—Musk would in effect be given the power to trim the very agencies that regulate him."
The report points to federal investigations into Tesla's claims about the "self-driving" capability of its vehicles, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) examining whether the claims constitute criminal fraud, and a case at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charging that Tesla retaliated against Black workers who reported being subjected to racist harassment at work.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Musk's $44 billion takeover of X and the Federal Trade Commission has received reports that Musk gave orders to employees that would have breached an FTC consent decree which the company, formerly called Twitter, entered in 2011 as part of a settlement for alleged deceptive practices and privacy violations.
SpaceX has been accused by the Environmental Protection Agency of pollution that violated the Clean Water Act, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last month accused the company of safety violations in its rocket launches in Florida.
Musk, who is the richest person in the world with a net worth of nearly $250 billion, has attempted to fight federal investigations and cases against his companies by threatening a lawsuit against the FAA alleging "regulatory overreach" and challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board and a DOJ case.
Last October, as the DOJ was expanding its probe of Tesla and just after the EEOC sued the company over racial discrimination, Musk called for "comprehensive deregulation."
"As eccentric and provocative as Elon Musk wants people to think he is, he's really just another corporate billionaire who wants to avoid accountability," said Claypool. "Nobody—not government officials or massive corporations or billionaire executives—is above the law. But if self-serving campaigns to the contrary succeed, the injustice of America's two-tiered justice system will only deepen."
The Public Citizen report comes days after Musk urged his followers to sign his petition supporting "free speech and the right to bear arms," promising a random $1 million payment each day to one registered voter who signs—a scheme legal experts say amounts to illegal vote-buying for Trump.
At The Nation on Monday, Jeet Heer noted that Trump has pledged to put Musk in charge of a “government efficiency commission” that could help eliminate federal regulations and advised Democrats to fight Musk's attempts to influence voters by calling attention to what he really is: "an oligarch threatening democracy."
"Musk's eagerness to elect Trump is clearly rooted in a squalid quid pro quo," Heer wrote. "Trump has promised to put Musk in charge of government efficiency. Since Musk's companies receive billions in government contracts every year—and often clash with government regulators—Musk would in effect be given the power to trim the very agencies that regulate him."
"Musk," wrote Heer, "is the perfect face of the new American robber barons."
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'Outrageous': New Roundup Is 45 Times More Toxic
"With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite," one expert said.
Oct 22, 2024
Facing tens of thousands of lawsuits after it acquired Monsanto, Bayer promised to remove cancer-linked glyphosate from its commercial Roundup weed killers by 2023. But an analysis published by Friends of the Earth on Tuesday reveals that the replacement is even more dangerous.
The environmental group found that many residential Roundup products still do contain glyphosate, and those that don't have replaced it with a chemical cocktail that is 45 times more toxic to human health following long-term exposure.
"With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite," Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "Bayer's willingness to deceive the public and disregard our health as it continues to cash in on the Roundup brand name is outrageous."
"In short, the new Roundup is not the old Roundup—it's worse."
Roundup weed killer was first commercially released by Monsanto 50 years ago. Since then, tens of thousands of people say they have come down with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after repeated use of the product and its active ingredient glyphosate, which the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer says is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Despite the risk, it is so widely used that it has been found in 80% of a test of U.S. urine samples.
"The human toll of Roundup is enormous—tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and their health because of this toxic weed killer," Klein said.
In response to both legal challenges and popular pressure, Bayer announced in 2021 that it would remove glyphosate from residential Roundup sold in the U.S. within two years.
To track how well Bayer kept that promise, Friends of the Earth assessed the Roundup products for sale at Lowe's and Home Depot—the largest home and garden stores in the U.S.—between June and October of 2024.
It found that seven of the Roundup products for sale still contained glyphosate, while the eight that did not used chemicals "of dramatically greater concern."
Bayer has replaced glyphosate with a combination of four chemicals—fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, diquat dibromide, and imazapic—the latter two of which are banned in the European Union. All four chemicals are even more dangerous to health than glyphosate on average following chronic exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) analysis of safety studies. The new ingredients have been linked to kidney and liver damage; reproductive, birth, and development problems; and allergic reactions or irritation that impact the eyes, skin, and respiratory system.
While all four are toxic, one stands out: Diquat dibromide is 200 times more toxic than glyphosate and is considered a "highly hazardous pesticide."
The new ingredients also pose a greater risk to the environment. They are, on average, more likely to threaten bees, birds, worms, and fish and other aquatic life. They are also less likely to break down in the environment, and therefore more likely to infiltrate groundwater and pollute rivers and drinking water.
"In short, the new Roundup is not the old Roundup—it's worse," Friends of the Earth concluded in the report.
The environmental group also criticized Bayer for not providing a warning to consumers about the altered ingredients, as well as lax federal law that does not require pesticide makers to alert shoppers when they change the ingredients of a known brand. While pesticide makers do have to list the active ingredients of a pesticide on the container, the average consumer may not be aware of the relative toxicity of these chemicals. A frequent Roundup user is also likely to assume that anything sold under that brand is similarly toxic to products they have used before.
"Drug companies are not allowed to replace the aspirin in a brand-name pain reliever with oxycontin or fentanyl, and for good reason," Friends of the Earth senior campaigner Sarah Starman said. "It is unconscionable that the Environmental Protection Agency allows this toxic sleight of hand and unethical that Bayer is exposing consumers to dramatically greater risks with no warning."
Friends of the Earth called on Bayer to develop safer chemicals and retire toxic brands like Roundup. At the very least, it urged the company to sell the new formulations under a different brand and warn buyers of the new products' health and environmental risks.
Home and garden retailers, the group argued, should also step up by removing all Roundup products from their stores and online catalogs, or at least selling them with clear warnings of the new risks; phase out toxic pesticides; and offer safer and more organic options.
Finally, the group called on the EPA to toughen its regulations by requiring ingredient-specific safety warnings on commercial pesticides, mandating that new formulations be sold under a new brand, and banning chemicals that harm human health and the environment from consumer products.
"Bayer, like other chemical companies, cannot be trusted to protect our health," Starman said. "We need serious reform at the EPA to ensure that the agency does its duty to protect people and the environment from dangerous pesticides."
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One Year of Israeli Bombing Has Set Gaza Back 7 Decades: UN Report
A new United Nations report sounds alarm "over the millions of lives that are being shattered and the decades of development efforts that are being wiped out," said one official.
Oct 22, 2024
A United Nations report published Tuesday estimates that Israel's relentless bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip has erased nearly seven decades of human development progress in just over a year, jeopardizing "the future of Palestinians for generations to come."
The report, produced by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) estimates that Gaza's poverty rate will surge to 74.3% this year—with over 2.6 million people newly impoverished—and the enclave's Human Development Index (HDI) will drop to 1955 levels.
The HDI is a measure that includes life expectancy at birth, education, and standard of living.
Since Israel's latest war on Gaza began in the wake of the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2024, the enclave has been transformed into a "graveyard for children" and a "vast wasteland of rubble and twisted steel," with schools, homes, hospitals, markets, sanitation facilities, and other civilian infrastructure utterly destroyed by Israeli airstrikes—often carried out with U.S. weaponry.
The new U.N. report observes that since last October, dozens of people have died of malnutrition and "there has been a high risk of famine in the Gaza Strip in the context of the ongoing war and the restriction of humanitarian access."
"Hunger and malnutrition among mothers and babies is hugely harmful to children's survival, growth, and development," the report states. "Across Gaza, 93% of children and 96% of pregnant and breastfeeding women are consuming fewer food groups daily, leading to households skipping meals."
The report also highlights Israel's destruction of Gaza's healthcare and education systems.
UNDP estimates that as of last month, 625,000 students in the enclave "have no access to education" and at least 10,317 students and 416 educational staff had been killed in Gaza. Schools that have not been destroyed have been turned into shelters for displaced people—shelters that Israeli forces have targeted repeatedly.
"Even if humanitarian aid is provided each year, the economy may not regain its pre-crisis level for a decade or more."
The new analysis warns that even if a permanent cease-fire is achieved in the near future—a scenario that does not appear likely—infectious diseases that have spread due to Israel's bombing of healthcare, sanitation, and water infrastructure are expected to remain a dire threat to the people of Gaza.
"Cholera, measles, polio, and meningococcal meningitis pose the greatest threats," the U.N. bodies said Tuesday. "Even if the war ended immediately, the time required to restore functioning health services would still result in thousands of excess deaths. Lack of access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities creates significant health risks for all, and can exacerbate the situation."
Achim Steiner, a UNDP administrator, said in a statement that the report's findings "confirm that amidst the immediate suffering and horrific loss of life, a serious development crisis is also unfolding."
"The assessment indicates that, even if humanitarian aid is provided each year, the economy may not regain its pre-crisis level for a decade or more," said Steiner. "As conditions on the ground allow, the Palestinian people need a robust early recovery strategy embedded in the humanitarian assistance phase, laying foundations for a sustainable recovery."
People who were injured during an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp await treatment at Al-Ahli Arab hospital on October 21, 2024. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
ESCWA's executive secretary, Rola Dashti, said that "our assessments serve to sound the alarm over the millions of lives that are being shattered and the decades of development efforts that are being wiped out."
"It is high time to end the suffering and bloodshed that have engulfed our region," Dashti added. "We must unite to find a lasting solution where all peoples can live in peace, dignity, and reap the benefit of sustainable development, and where international law and justice are finally upheld."
Ahead of the U.N. report's release, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) secretary-general Jan Egeland announced that members of his organization's staff are visiting Gaza City this week to witness "the utter devastation there as a result of Israeli bombardment."
"The scale of destruction is truly shocking," said Egeland, adding that NRC staffers "were able to speak with those who had fled North Gaza, most of which is under tight siege."
"Testimonies they heard from people there," Egeland continued, "included elderly parents unable to reach the bodies of their dead children for burial, of the sick and desperate with zero access to essential medicine, and of people now destitute having spent entire life savings just trying to survive."
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